


Mestra

by caatoblepas



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caatoblepas/pseuds/caatoblepas
Summary: fuck magic all my homies hate magicthis work has no plot or anything its just about not knowing your body. i dont know if i would consider this to be gory but it gets a little freaky and id rather be safe than sorryi just watched rwby for the first time and i didnt get why she hated being able to turn into a raven so i wrote this in one sitting. this is not a super long work. i am going to lie down now
Kudos: 3





	Mestra

You seem uncertain of my anguish, of my rage, so I will tell you this much:

This morning I awoke from my dream (and it is my dream, because it is my dream alone and because all others have abandoned me) with my body twisting under the strain of my coughing, and in the dull gray of the morning I could’ve sworn I saw a single black feather shoot from my mouth and onto my bed. 

The details of my dream shift occasionally but the gist remains the same every time: I am alone in the woods, and I am hungry. On the wind, I catch the scent of some dead animal and I take to the skies, my hands catching the air with a wonderful ease as they send me upwards. The flight is a joy. I close my eyes and feel the kiss of the wind on my skin, and it’s as if the world itself has me in its embrace. The scent of carrion grows stronger, and I drift lazily downwards, delighting in every minute I am airborne. My feet land on solid ground as I find the fresh carcass of a raven before me. With relish, I bend over and dig my teeth into its flesh, and it is the most sublime thing I have tasted in my entire life. I raise my beak to take another bite and when I look down again it is my body on the ground, my face twisted in an expression of impossible delight, my skin covered in pitch-black down. I cover my eyes with my wings, and deep inside me I feel a mass of feathers well up deep inside my body, and it comes up through my stomach, and now through my throat, and it is all I can do not to choke to death in my sleep when I feel them force their way through my mouth and now the first leaves my lips and the dream ends.

The mind of a bird was not made to hold the mind of a human. To fly in a body you weren’t born with is to experience terror like nothing else. The wind batters my wings and tears at my feathers and every second is filled with the agonizing fear that this next gust, this next flap will rip me from the sky and send my body down to break upon the earth. It feels profane beyond all obscenities to cram the mind of a human, with all its anxieties and emotions and quirks of identity, into the skull of a raven. Every time I shift it is despite the fear that I am losing some bit of memory, some treasured fragment of who I am, just so I can fit within a raven’s skull. I know I have forgotten things. I cannot say what, for certain. I tell myself that I was a mother once. 

I am truly lucky to have such skill in combat, as I still question if a blow landed on me would draw feathers from beneath my skin, or if my bones would snap like those of a bird, or if my foes would cut down some limb I don’t know I have and leave me bleeding out on the ground. I have tried to draw my sword to cut down prey, only to find my wings grasping at air, and I have launched myself at the face of my enemy biting and tearing and clawing as if my mouth were sharper, as if I could pounce with the help of the wind under my wings. My body was made a weapon by this gift. I can drop my sword, lock it within its sheath, forget the stances and forms and strikes that I drilled into my brain over the course of decades, but my beak will always be built to pick and pierce, and my talons will always be sharp, and my eyes will still be sharper.

I wish I could abandon myself. More than anything, this gift is a temptation. If I could just carve more and more of myself off until I am shaped like a bird should be, I would be at peace for once. Some nights I am sleepless with the hope that tomorrow will be the day I give in. Some days I feel the wind on my face and dream that that sensation doesn’t strike me with instinctual terror, of a day where my body cuts through the air with ease, a day where I know the next day will be just the same as this one, and the day after will be too. Still, I tell myself that I was a mother once.


End file.
